Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I very much want to be associated with this condolence motion. I suspect I am the first who will speak on this matter who actually served with Jim between 1977 and 1994 while he was a member of the House of Representatives. He was a very dear and close colleague whom I knew well, and I was particularly pleased to be able to be in Melbourne for the memorial service, because it was truly a wonderful occasion to celebrate a life. I had a chance to talk to Di. I had spoken to her before that service and she knows how much she and he have meant to my wife Heather and me over such a long period of time.

But, interestingly, if you go back and look at Jim's career, his involvement with politics was much before he became a member of the House of Representatives. You will find in his valedictory speech the observations that I knew that he was involved in student politics. Being some eight years older than me when he passed away, he was a student politician long before I was involved at university. He was the president of the SRC at Sydney. He was the president of the Liberal Club, but I know that his engagement was with the Liberal Party under perhaps the greatest mentor that any of us could ever have—Sir John Carrick. Sir John Carrick was, I think, a great admirer of Jim and what he was able to do.

In 1956 he got elected to the Liberal Party state council and, in his own speech he made it clear that even then he was a person with very strong views about the nature of Australia. He recalls that he was, in 1956, before Harold Holt did it, instrumental in obtaining a vote within a dozen of overturning the White Australia policy—somewhat courageous at that time. He said, 'They were the kinds of issues I was interested in.' Many of us have heard about his views in relation to the economy but, before I come to that, I wanted to say that this engagement with the Liberal Party in New South Wales led to his appointment in 1971 as the party's general secretary, a title we no longer keep. We now talk about 'state directors'. He was the general secretary of the Liberal Party. He played a very important role in reforming the Liberal Party's campaigning structures, and it may be said that it was probably important to do so, because he was conducting a campaign in 1972 in which the McMahon government lost and Whitlam came to office.

I am pleased that our path crossed in 1973. As the general secretary he was the person who was able to organise the campaign for the federal division of Parramatta when Sir Nigel Bowen retired and I was first elected to this place. I do not know that it was an adornment in every respect that I was elected, but I have to say that, to achieve a very large majority in Parramatta at that time—moving from a 368 that Nigel Bowen had held in the election in 1972—I think looked pretty good on his CV. Billy Snedden was the then leader. Jim Carlton's campaign on my behalf was particularly meaningful to me. I have to say that what it may have cost him was the most expensive by-election that the Liberal Party had ever had to conduct up to that time. There may have been others that have exceeded it since.

It was only natural that somebody like Jim Carlton, who had played such a significant role from his university days in the Liberal Party organisation and who had demonstrated his very considerable achievements in the private sector, particularly in the management organisation, McKinsey, was able to play a role in public life. When I read through his maiden speech—we now call it a First Speech but I am sure it was then called a maiden speech—I found a comment he made towards the end of his address, and I think it is as relevant today as it was then. He said:

Overall, I believe it is necessary for us to have an absolutely creative approach to the new structure of our economy over the next 20 or 30 years—

he might have extended it—

and not to assume that we must necessarily be a totally tributary economy of overseas economies. It is necessary for us to look at our own skills. We have in Australia the necessary skills to look at the problem with creativity and imagination. I certainly do not accept that overseas is best. I have worked in places overseas where people did not have anywhere overseas to look and they had to sit down and do things themselves. This is something that some of our best people have done. It is something that nationally more of us should do. Certainly in what is a world problem of youth unemployment and unemployment on a general scale we should have an Australianmade solution which may well lead the world.

He was thinking about these issues very strongly at that time, but it is interesting that when he came to make his own valedictory speech he made this observation:

Since I have been in parliament, I have had to become more concerned with the shift that needed to be brought about in Australia from an essentially inward looking and somewhat protectionist society into a liberal market economy—

I would hear a lot of hear, hears in relation to that—

that was capable of standing in the world as an equal with anybody else.

But interestingly, he moved on to conclude in this way:

Over this period it has worried me that I have been characterised as being solely concerned with economic issues, but I have only ever regarded these economic issues as a means to achieving social outcomes.

I think those are particularly poignant remarks and, when you look at his life after politics, you can see it working its way through. I am not going to repeat all that has been said about his work for the Red Cross, restructuring that organisation in the way that he did and enabling it to do its task even more effectively as a result. I do not want to talk—as my colleagues have—about his considerable managerial skills that were sought by the Boston corporation. I want to note some of the matters he raised with me as he talked about the way in which better benefits could be delivered for the people of Papua New Guinea, about which I am sure my colleague will speak.

There is not a great deal that I want to add. I think his record speaks for itself. He was a great Australian whom we will all miss because we kept in touch with him, we saw him and we admired him. I would say to Di that I know the way in which she was revered by him but I know the way in which she supported him in his role, and I thank her for that. I was particularly impressed with the way in which his son Rob conducted the memorial service. His children have each made significant contributions through their own lives and it says much of the family that Alex, Freya and Rob have distinguished themselves in the way in which they have. I am so pleased to be associated with this motion, having served so long with my friend Jim Carlton.

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